Torture Row
Torture Row
By Karim Q.
By morning the florescent fortress is on lockdown. In the uneasy quiet of empty block-halls, fear floats like some miasmic gas. Through bars of steel the prisoners peer, their ears heal sharp for any unusual sounds, unable to see at any useful angel. A few distant crackles of walkie-talkies down the hall make several inmates perk up but the noise suggest nothing irregular. Hours pass in eerie lockdown silence.
Suddenly a low siren sounds, reverberating around D-block and into the cells making the men start. The inmates turn to those they can. Scattered shouts of disbelief, applause and claging of bars erupt among the cells, and for the first time in days, the men have grins on their collective faces. Some inmates shout “jailbreak, jailbreak!!” (for what else could the siren signify?), and listen over the clamor for the subsequent township-wide alarm.
It never comes. The siren fades off like a foghorn, blast again, then fades, continually blaring on-and-off. The prisoners’ excitement quickly dies into confusion, and their thickest silence yet settles beneath the siren. Abruptly, within the block crackles a chorus of walkie-talkies, and key-rings jangle all around the cells. The entire three shift of guards dash en masse from cell to cell, armed with batons and armored like myrmidons, and suddenly the tense prisoner quiet is cut by shouts of fearful rage, and the unmistakable sound of beatings. Cries of “get the fuck off” and “pigs” harmonize with boots and batons thudding against muscle and bone. Out of open cells the most resistant prisoners are dragged, handcuffed, into empty cells or shower holds to be locked in and bludgeoned. Though naked, though unarmed, some fight back only to be seized on by the armored mob. Outside of D-Block, the other blocks hear the shouts and grunts as distorted, ghostly echoes.
By dusk the cell-block has settled. The few unharmed inmates can do nothing but sit and whisper to their huddled neighbors who, broken and bloody, shudder underbeat the flickering florescent light. The prisoners are silent again: this time with the flat silence of defeat, as hoses was away the blood stains from the walls, the floor, the faces of the just rebellious men. Lockdown continues. Not quite death row.